Fast-food workers in Michigan take part in protest

DETROIT (AP) — Fast-food workers in at least nine Michigan cities took part in walkouts Thursday as part of a push to get restaurant chains to pay workers higher wages.

In Detroit, the dining area of a McDonald's on the city's northwest side was shut down Thursday morning as workers and others protested outside.

Democratic U.S. Reps. John Conyers, of Michigan, and Keith Ellison, of Minnesota, were scheduled to join Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry in a protest march and rally in downtown Detroit.

Protesters also rallied outside a McDonald's in Flint.

"I do everything. I do front counter. I clean, sweep floors, mop, sweep up outside," Lorenzo Johnson, 19, told MLive.com. "This is a multi-million-dollar business. They probably need to be forced" to raise wages.

McDonald's issued a statement saying that it "aims to offer competitive pay and benefits to our employees.

In Lansing, workers picketed outside a Pizza Hut.

Workers want $15 an hour, better working conditions and the right to unionize. The restaurant industry says higher wages would hurt job creation.

"I can't bring my family here to eat. On a week's check? Please," Ramona Jackson, 52, an opening-shift cook at the Pizza Hut, told the Lansing State Journal. She said she has worked there 2 years. "We're not asking for a lot — $15 is not a lot."

Similar protests were taking place in the Detroit suburbs of Dearborn, Ferndale, Highland Park, Lincoln Park, Oak Park and Southfield, said Darci McConnell, spokeswoman for the protest organizing group D15.

"We need to make $15 an hour so that we can pay our bills," Terrence Collins, 27, who walked off his job at a McDonald's on Detroit's west side, said in a statement from D15.

These aren't the first such strikes in Michigan. Workers at fast food restaurants walked off their jobs in May and July as part of the effort.

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